


all the things i need to say

by seasparks



Series: Leamilie love stories [1]
Category: CrossCode (Video Game)
Genre: CrossCode Spoilers, F/F, crying but only for happy reasons, in the future there is no netflix, only lesbians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25396768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seasparks/pseuds/seasparks
Summary: Sergey figures out how to automate the process of adding words to Lea's vocabulary and invites Emilie along for the ride. Everyone gets more than they bargained for out of it, in the best possible way.
Relationships: Lea/Emilie
Series: Leamilie love stories [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1841182
Comments: 9
Kudos: 22





	all the things i need to say

**Author's Note:**

> This has MAJOR spoilers in it! Do not read it if you haven't beat the game and don't want to be spoiled!

Sergey had the kind of grin on his face that Lea had come to associate with weird programming challenges. "Whyyyyy?" she asked, dreading the answer. Normally when he was grinning like this it was in a life-and-death situation that demanded speed, precision, and correctness. Lea wasn't sure she wanted to know what foolishness he could cook up without that kind of pressure on him. Her hand reached up to touch one of the extremely tacky horns on her head.

"You're asking why I asked you and Emilie to meet me here in the middle of the night?" Sergey clarified. At Lea's exasperated nod, he continued. "Well, you see, I...wait, that's fascinating," he said, suddenly sidetracked. "It has only been five hours since I last logged you out. If you were a flesh-and-blood human it would make sense for you to be tired, but this is the first evidence I've seen that you can get tired as an Evotar! This is—"

"WHY?!?!" Lea asked again.

"Yeah! C'mon, Lea's Dad! Spill the goods!" Emilie demanded from next to her.

Sergey buried his face in his palm. "I told you, Emilie, I am not Lea's father. That would be biologically impossible, and if anyone has the right to call himself her father it would be Satoshi, not me."

"Who says she can't have two dads, Lea's Other Dad?" Emilie replied smugly. Lea nodded in agreement.

"S-so, about why I called you here!" said Sergey, thankful that the washed-out blue of his projection would hide his blush. "I have good news for you, Lea! I've figured out how to add many more words to your vocabulary!"

"How? How?" said Lea excitedly.

Sergey pushed up his glasses, more because it seemed like a cool thing to do than anything. "I've developed an algorithm that will cause Lea's neural centers to process and learn a large corpus of video and audio while emulating higher neuroplasticity, then run vocal simulations to replicate the linguistic utterances and semiotically couple them with the nodes that represent those words in her mind."

Lea and Emilie stared. "...how?" ventured Lea.

"She'll watch a bunch of videos and learn how to say words from them."

"Ohhhhh," said Emilie. "So like, movies and stuff, yeah?"

"Yes, there will be some movies in there."

Emilie turned to Lea. "So...wanna come back to my place for some movies and chill and language acquisition?" She waggled her eyebrows for emphasis.

Lea nodded enthusiastically. "Lea!"

"I'm afraid Lea will not understand your meaning, Emilie, having literally never been exposed to popular culture," said Sergey."

" _Qu'est-ce que c'est?_ " said Emilie, blushing furiously. "I just meant, you know, gals bein' pals and watching movies all normal-like."

"Hm." Sergey steepled his fingers and let Emilie stew for a moment before continuing. "Anyway, your extremely chaste and pure intentions would be fruitless anyway. I need to take her offline for this, and this will also require vastly more training data than you two could watch together in a lifetime, even without...distractions." Emilie found something extremely fascinating to look at off to one side. "Luckily, as an evotar, Lea should be able to process it all in about...30 seconds or so!"

" _Sacre bleu!_ And here I thought watching my professors' lectures at 2.5x speed was a lifehack! So, what words are you gonna teach your daughter this time?"

"Ah, well, you see," Sergey began, "it's not...entirely up to me. While the process is essentially an automated version of what I did to give Lea her current small vocabulary one word at a time, neither of us has any control over what words she will actually learn. It's all about probabilities, not hard guarantees."

" _Oh la la~_ So you're saying our Lea might even learn to say f—"

" _Yes,_ there are _all sorts of things_ she might be able to learn," Sergey said quickly before Emilie could finish her sentence. "Thankfully, a lack of corpus moderation hasn't been an issue for millenia, so we don't need to worry about any of the issues that ran rampant in the early days of machine learning, but there is a chance her vocabulary could become more...colorful."

Sergey turned to Lea. "So, are you ready?" Lea nodded. "Emilie, do you mind waiting a few minutes for us? I'll need to take Lea offline while I do this."

" _Oui, oui, bien sûr!_ " said Emilie. "Though, what do you need me here for if I'm just going to be waiting around?"

"I simply thought you would want to be around for such an important moment for your...gal pal, as you put it. Now, let's go, Lea!" Sergei motioned to something offscreen, and Lea signed off, followed by Sergei's window disappearing.

As soon as they were gone, Emilie pumped her fist in the air. "YEAH!!! THIS RULES!!!" She began pacing around and mumbling to herself, "C'mon, c'mon, hurry up and finish already, I wanna know what Lea's gonna learn!"

Patience was never one of Emilie's strengths.

Finally, after what felt like forever (but was in fact just shy of a minute and a half), Sergei's face reappeared. "She's done," he said. "Do you need a moment to compose yourself?"

Emilie nodded and tried to stand still, then gave up and settled for bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. "Go ahead, send her in!"

Lea logged back in with the telltale sound of instant matter construction. "Welcome back, Lea!" Sergey said. "How are you feeling?"

"Lea!" said Lea, smiling.

"Have you learned any new words yet?" Sergey leaned in, clearly excited to see if his work had paid off.

Lea pondered for a moment. "Um," she said.

"It's okay, Lea, take your time," said Sergey.

"Um!" repeated Lea.

"Yes? What is it?"

"Um! Um! Lea um!" Lea started to look frustrated.

Realization dawned on Sergey. "Oh! Of course! I never even considered that, but it makes perfect sense that 'um' would show up enough to make an impression on you!"

"Um," declared Lea.

" _Fantastique!_ How about some real words?" Emilie said, beaming.

Lea thought for another moment, then gave Emilie a smug smile and pointed at Sergey. "Dad," she said.

"Dad!!" echoed Emilie!

"Dad!"

"Dad!"

"Lea Dad!"

"Lea's Dad!"

The girls continued on for a few minutes, then looked at Sergey, expecting a reprimand. Instead, they saw that he had taken his glasses off and was tearing up.

"Lea, that's..." Sergey began, then stopped. "I...I may have to reconsider my position on fatherhood. Thank you, Lea. That's...incredibly touching." He started wiping off his glasses, not trusting his voice any longer.

"Thanks, Dad!" said Lea. She concentrated again to try and find some more words she could say; it was much easier when Sergey could just list them for her. "Um..." she said, then paused. "Umm..." Her brow furrowed in intense concentration. After a while, she looked back up at Emilie, a huge smile on her face. "Alley!"

Emilie laughed. " _Oui_ , now you can point out where we are next time we visit Basin City!"

Lea shook her head. "Um, alley!" she said.

"Uhh, does 'alley' have another meaning in English that I never learned?" asked Emilie, perplexed.

Another headshake. "Um alley!" repeated Lea. When Emilie just looked more confused, Lea pointed at herself and said "Lea," then pointed at Emilie and said "Um alley."

Emilie's jaw dropped. " _Ma chérie_...did you just say...my name?"

Lea nodded this time, her smile widening. "Um alley!"

Tears suddenly streaming down her face, Emilie lunged forward and wrapped Lea in a tight embrace. " _Ma chérie, ma Lea...je t'aime, je t'aime, je_...um, I mean...it's beautiful, Lea. It sounds beautiful. Please, say it again?"

In a softer voice this time, Lea whispered into Emilie's ear, "Um alley."

Sergey finally put his glasses back on. "I think this is my cue to give you some privacy. Take care, girls," he said, then winked out of their fields of view.

The departure barely registered to Lea and Emilie, who were in their own little world. Lea was periodically repeating Emilie's name, and had started absentmindedly stroking Emilie's hair with one hand. Emilie was sobbing tears of joy into Lea's shoulder, interspersed with short streams of French.

Finally, Emilie calmed down enough to say, "Thank you, Lea." She laughed, and added, "I had to go into my settings and crank up my avatar's sensory input in the middle of all that, just to make sure I wasn't missing out on anything. You're a great hugger, _chérie_ , and your fingers running through my hair..." She shivered.

"Um alley okay?" Lea asked, giving Emilie a little squeeze of reassurance. 

"What? Oh, _oui oui_ , of course! Never better."

Lea pulled out of the hug enough for them to look each other in the face. The first thing Emilie noticed was that Lea's cheeks, in addition to being covered in tears, were bright red. "Lea..." Lea began, her voice shaking. "Lea...love...um alley. Um alley...love...Lea?"

This time, Emilie was the one at a loss for words. She nodded her head vigorously, then found Lea's hand with her own and gave it a squeeze.

Her confidence bolstered by Emilie's response, Lea leaned forward and whispered, "Lea kiss um alley. Okay?"

Emilie nodded again, and after that, neither of them needed words for the rest of the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Lea can say "fuck", but she won't in front of her dad.  
> \- the title is from the song "Inside" from the game Sayonara Wild Hearts  
> \- YES we are just writing Sergey as Tech Giles (from Buffy), NO you cannot stop us  
> \- Lea also picked up articles and pronouns and a bunch of other useful stuff; she's just not using them yet. Part of it is that she's crafty and wants to save them to surprise Sergey and others at the best possible moment, but she's also just used to the way she talks by now.  
> \- Unfortunately, she didn't pick up any names. After Sergey logged off, he spent a few hours frantically theorizing about how Lea is able to combine existing words to approximate other sounds, but still not able to say those new words on their own. During bathroom breaks, he brainstormed ways to help Lea learn names, too.  
> \- all of this happens upstairs in the First Scholars' HQ, but since it's like 4 in the morning nobody else is online. they make out for like a couple hours, then fall asleep in each others' arms. Lukas is the first to sign on and see them sleeping there wrapped around each other. He left them alone and put a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the door.  
> \- "Hey Sergey, can you hack some cosmetic mods into the game?" "Possibly, but why?" "Well, we're stuck in these same outfits all the time and it gets kinda bland, y'know?" "I know, but that's how the game is." "It sucks so much for Lea, though! It's not like she can change outfits irl." "I see what you mean, but—" "I WANNA SEE MY GIRLFRIEND'S TITS, NERD BOY" "Okay! Okay! I did NOT need to know that! ...but, I'll see what I can do. Maybe Shizuka can help..."


End file.
